April 05, 2009

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved legislation
to curb "excessive" employee pay at financial firms that receive
government bailout funds, a measure that could supplant an earlier
effort to heavily tax executive bonuses.

The bill, which passed on a 247-171 vote, would give the U.S.
Treasury broad powers to prohibit "unreasonable and excessive"
compensation and bonuses that are not based on performance standards.

The light at the end of the hope and change tunnel is an oncoming train. The conductor is not slowing down:

Over the past three months we have witnessed some truly amazing
movements by the Obama administration. He has proposed more spending
than all Presidents in history combined; he has trampled the
Constitution by allowing the Treasury to take on a dictator style
infringement on private companies, and now the democratically lead
Congress has proposed the “Pay for Performance Act” which
passed Thursday with even some Republican Congressman voted for it.

This bill essentially allows the Treasury to define “fair pay” for
all employees, at any level. Worse, the Treasury would like to be able
to take over any company it deemed as important enough to take over
regardless of whether or not it had accepted bailout funds. Worse
still, the Serve Act proposes to make volunteering for the government
mandatory (with pay, of course). Last time I looked, working for pay
was called A JOB.

The scariest part of the bill is that while you’re serving as a
“volunteer,” you’re prohibited from participating in worship and church
activities, political rallies and being involved in a union. In short,
your essential freedoms are gone. I keep hearing about Obama being a
socialist but, I have to disagree. Based on these measures he appears
to more like a person pursuing Communism or Fascism.

It's about power and control. We have already ceded way too much power to Washington. But we ain't seen nothing yet.

Obama wants to control the banks. There's a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money. He's got the banks right where he wants them. If he accepts the money he loses the control. It's that simple. But he is not finished. He and his comrades in Congress have a grand scheme and the conditions are perfect. Too many Americans are so caught up in "Hope and Change" they cannot feel the water getting hotter. And it's getting hotter by the minute.

Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?

Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think
so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the
National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that
would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to
protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad
power is rattling some civil libertarians.

That broad power should rattle every American.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009
(PDF) gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity
emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical"
information network "in the interest of national security." The bill
does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity
emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also
grants the Secretary of Commerce "access to all relevant data
concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law,
regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." This means he or
she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks
without regard to privacy laws.

While you were sleeping, Congress was hard at work…passing the $3.6 trillion budget spending
your hard-earned money. A bunch of fiscal restraint amendments were
adopted to create an aura of responsibility — with Democrat senators
openly confessing they’ll just throw the amendments out during
conference. And who knows what other chicanery will occur in the backrooms:

The House and Senate approved budgets of about $3.5
trillion for the government on Thursday with no Republican support, a
sign of deep partisan tensions likely to color Congressional efforts to
enact major policy initiatives sought by President Obama.

On the heels of House approval of its spending plan for 2010, the
Senate voted 55 to 43 shortly before midnight to adopt a similar budget
after a day spent laboring over politically tinged amendments that did
little to change a fiscal blueprint generally in keeping with Mr.
Obama’s ambitious agenda.

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he'll have a pretty
good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the
internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to
explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the
president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every
component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states,
and you will leave him slack-jawed.

...

...(Obama's) goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the
relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to
narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons
of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize
education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety
about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast
new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich
and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it
upon the American social order is his mission.

Obama's takeover of General Motors should send a loud and clear warning to the States who plan to accept stimulus dollars. It is preposterous on its face. The money Obama is offering, with all strings attached, came from the states in the first place. It is already our money. Yet some governors are more than willing to accept it (some are begging for it) and the strings that are attached.

It is up to the people of the United States to stand up for
themselves. After all, the Ninth Amendment and 10th Amendment reserve
and guarantee the people and their state governments all the powers
that are not expressly granted to the federal government.That's
why people across the country, including most recently this weekend in
Kalispell, have held Tea Parties to express their outrage over the
federal government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong and
putting its hand in your wallet and mine. Congress and the president
apparently envision a country where they control every sector of the
economy, and nearly every sector of our private lives. The stimulus
bill and the proposed 10-year budget are in essence a federal down
payment on ownership of our American soul. Is yours for sale?

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The Federalist Papers

Degree of Madness

"...... ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority
of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State,
or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm.....But what
DEGREE OF MADNESS could ever drive the federal government to such an
extremity."
Federalist #46 James Madison